Wednesday, January 29, 2020

By special request, it's time for PLOK! One of the finest games on the SNES, Plok is a fun-tastic ride for children of all ages. You play as a red-clad Klansman as he battles to rid the world of nefarious clowns and fleas. Let's do this. Side note: This game was prominently featured in the first Nintendo Power magazine I ever got after subscribing. So I've really got a soft spot for this one.

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Back in ye olden days of 1995, I played a little SNES game called Lord of the Rings Vol 1. This is hands-down one of the worst games I've ever played. Still, I went against my own best interests out of blind love (wouldn't be the last time) for the source material and played the hell out of this game. I never finished it, though. I reached the final dungeon and quit because it's a complete maze.

Regardless, I totally hit this game up just to finish what I started long ago, and I got some screenshots in the process. The game uses a password system, so I found a password to skip to the final dungeon - albeit with underpowered characters - and went for it. This game may be awful overall, but the final dungeon is quite respectable. It's like the developers put all their energy into the Mines of Moria.

It took me maybe an hour and a half to do the final dungeon and finish the game, using maps extensively. Without maps... my God, that may well be one of the nastiest dungeons in gaming history.

Monday, January 27, 2020

Today on Mana: The Ancient City, Mana Holyland, and shattered trees. Weirdly enough, this version of the game skips the second flight theme entirely, going right from the first flight theme to the third one after the Mana Fortress rises.

Monday, January 20, 2020

We're back live, as it turns out that HKs aren't too bright. Their design is iconic and all, but I wonder about its efficiency. Seems like it consists of a lot of metal and resources to lug around just to snipe people from above. How do they not run out of fuel after one day?

Saturday, January 18, 2020

We've waited a really, really long time for a good Terminator game with modern visuals. After that kind of wait, all this game needed to do was be decent and not broken. Well, turns out it's a pretty darn cool game that does a lot right. It does what any post-T2 movie should have done to begin with and gives us the story leading up to the end of the war (and the beginning of the first two movies).

Monday, January 13, 2020

Time for another list. This features mostly RPGs, but not all. Only main story bosses count. No uberbosses (Ruby Weapon, FFVII), postgame bosses (Nemesis, FFX), or optional fights (Warmech, FF1). The only criteria for this list is that it's a main story boss that exceeds the final boss in difficulty, or at least causes more grief for the player than the last boss. Also, one boss per game.

Saturday, January 4, 2020

Rez is an amazing and little-known PS2 game. It's the predecessor to Child of Eden on the PS3/360. Unfortunately, the series ends there, though it did get a PS4 remaster later on. This is a very unique music-based psychedelic shooter, for lack of a better term. It doesn't really seem to fit into any established genres.

Unfortunately, it's also fairly impossible to play in the original PS2 form. It's somewhat rare as is, and even if you buy a copy, it's one of those purple-disc PS2 games that barely runs right on any of the systems. That was a really common thing in 2001, unfortunately.... but I wonder what RPG Maker 2's excuse was in 2004.

In any case, emulation of this game is surprisingly easy for a PS2 game, barely an inconvenience. This is likely because it came early in the life of the system and isn't graphically advanced as a result. Enough of this extended intro, onward with the game!

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

This is one of my favorite episodes in the entire show, as Fitzcairn returns for more shenanigans. Fitz is, of course, played by Roger Daltrey of The Who. Or as the kids of 2019 know them: "The who? Are they on Tik Tok?"